AA transcon Y pricing over the next 2-3 months
 

Does anyone know what's going on here? one-way JFK <-> SFO/LAX flights across all of June, July and much of August seem to be pricing at ~$900+ consistently OW. (With few lower-priced outliers here and there)

All other carriers are charging "normal"-ish prices (~200-500) for their transcon routes.

Is AA just enjoying incredible demand for Y right now on transcon routes? Is everyone booking transcon with the aim of burning 7/30/22 expiring SWUs? Or did AA somehow not load their fares correctly?

Travel demand is extremely high right now. People are taking summer vacations that they weren't able to for 2 years. Just spot checking some of the dates you mentioned, looks like AA only has full fare economy fares available. I don't think it's elites wanting to burn SWUs, if you look at the seatmaps, all the non-preferred seats are occupied.

I'd like to think this is an error. For example this week JFK-LAX, some flights are Y9 yet selling only full fare economy, mostly Y with occasional H. This is *every flight*.
I've also seen crazy one way international pricing (compared to competitors), full fare economy only, persist for weeks. Who knows if AA truly should be so different from competitors or if they are having severe RM control problems lately

Also if you search roundtrip it drops to around $1,200, $600ish each way.

Just 3 months ago, JFK-LAX R/T on AA Y was priced less than $500..

If strictly focusing on the A321T, it has a smaller Y cabin, which means that there's less number of discounted seats.

Similar higher pricing for J and F as well - some of the flights are pricing out at over $3,000 one way.

But as stated in the OP, fares aren’t nearly as high on any other airline. So the generic explanation of “because capitalism”‘ doesn’t explain this.

My guess is AA RM dropped the ball (per usual) and sold a few too many cheap seats 8 months ago. Now they want to cash in on demand, but have no inventory to work with. So, they are stuck with highly innovative strats like pricing Y at $1000 and hoping someone buys it.

Heck, maybe it's working: I just paid $918 for a one-way BOS-LAX in Y in July, utter lunacy. But it's OPM (and at the time it was a modest $100-something of my own money to upfare to Flagship J, and I'll probably put a BXP1 on it to get into Flagship F).

Truly seems like a mistake though when on my date, UA, DL, and B6 all come in at $395 to $519 and then AA shows up with $918.

Glad I bought SFO-JFK in Jan for a trip this August. Only $210 r/t :)

There are plenty of examples for the summer where UA or DL fares are sky high and the others aren’t. It’s seems customers aren’t shopping around as much as they used to or the airlines aren’t feeling the need to match fares. With no ability to add flights due to staff shortages it seems like the airlines are just trying to get every dollar they can and aren’t worried about losing share.

Up until a week or two ago they were pretty regularly 529 each way, dropping to 350ish of seats weren’t sold a few days out. Then they jumped to 1k plus each way but I didn’t realize they did that months out (thought it was just planes filled up in the next week or two).

wonder who they can fill these flights with at 1k each way? Corporate contracts and business fliers on OPM? Can imagine how many people would fly transcon Y at these fares instead of B6 or other carriers at 70% less…

Fortunately, I book most of my trips 3-5 months ahead, especially if I see a good fare. I bought several tickets between Feb. 17 and Feb. 24. (Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.) I got some LAX-MIA Flagship J tickets when the price was $699. (I paid less because I booked through Amex). These flights went to $799, then $899, and now a quick scan shows them at $1,189 and up.

I heard a comment somewhere to the effect that it costs $30K to fuel up a plane for a transcon. (I don't remember what kind of plane, nor what the exact route was.)

The lesson for now is, I guess, shop more carefully.

It's like a mistake fare, but a different kind of mistake fare! :D A mistake in the other direction.

I think it's an inventory error. Been seeing quite a few of these on AA the past few months. And if it's not an error, they should fire whoever's doing it, because it's costing them sales.
Actually travel demand, and fares, are dropping somewhat precipitously. Noted in other fora, that it's now often possible to score travel credits rebooking tix as fares drop. I buy tix every week and am seeing fairly dramatic price drops.

I hope you're right. I'm watching several leisure trips that I haven't booked yet because prices are double what I'd expect. Business trips I have to take, and they are all much higher than just a few months ago.